[venuvedam]

And anyone remember ZX Spectrum Plus computer with Chess games on audio cassettes?

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by venuvedam

And anyone remember ZX Spectrum Plus computer with Chess games on audio cassettes?

Yes. I had one and another Sinclaire Quantum Leap (with 32bit processor as the computers at that time used Zilog Z80 - 8 bit CPU). Sinclaire QL used micro cartridges and came with powerful software - roughly the equivalent of the MS Office. I cut my teeth into computing in the 80s using these micro computers.

The ZX Spectrum + despite its diminutive size of RAM of 48k could play great Chess and other games. I used it to add titles and simple sprite graphics entirely programming in machine language. You needed an Audio cassette to record and load software. You could use any TV as these micro computers gave out a composite Video output. The eccentric Sir Clive Sinclaire who designed these computers also came up with electric bikes amongst other inventions.

[Sutripta]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Don't jump to conclusion, we only look young. We have two mods who were born in the 50s and 3 more more born in the 60s.

But what is their exposure to computers!?

Don't forget the D's!
Learning
IBM 1130 + 1132 + 1403 +1442 + manually swapable disk packs. Programming on punch cards (also called Hollerith cards).

Various Processor cards: Kim1, SDK85, MEK6800, etc. Including a bit slice board.

Work
CP/M on various machines. From 48K RAM to 128K bank switched.

Specialised version of Unix (TNIX) running on proprietery hardware.

PC XT (ST225 20MB HDD) + Hercules card onwards.

Hobby/ personal
Homebrew.
Sinclair ZX80
Sinclair spectrum
Commodore 64

Various laptops, starting with a Sharp lunchbox.

Odds and ends used.
8", 5.25", 3.5" floppies.
Zip drives (100MB)
Cartridge tape drives

Laser Printers costing 1 lac +
CD writers costing 25K +
19" colour monitor costing close to a lac.

2114, 6116 SRams
4116 DRams.
(Interestingly, for its 32K bank, the Sinclair spectrum used defective 64K chips. Sourced cheaply. these were actually 64K chips in which there was a defect in one half of it.)

Lots more actually. But this being a car forum, let it go at that.

And I'm not a programmer. And computers aren't my favourite subject.

Regards
Sutripta

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by Sutripta

But what is their exposure to computers!?

One of them who is also a grandfather, is a software pro with 30+ years of experience.

[deathwalkr]

Originally Posted by venuvedam

And anyone remember ZX Spectrum Plus computer with Chess games on audio cassettes?

Spectrum was fun time for me while growing up. Games like Attic Attack, Jetpack et all were just amazing for a kid like me

The loading screens were tripping psychedelic

PCs with black and white screens playing prince of persia, digger, pac man [was that there then?]

Then got my very own pc in 95. pentium 60 processor, 500mb hard disk, 16mb ram.

Playing doom, heretic, raptor. Oh man those were good times. Simple times but good times.

[DerAlte]

I started in 1975 with PDP8 and no storage or I/O devices (for some reason college didn't get them). It had magnetic core memory, switches for input and neon lamps for output. Set switches for address and data, push Load, repeat till all instructions and data were fed in. Then run till output shows up on lamps. Then formal FORTRAN for some time, and some BASIC. Made a VT100-type terminal using a TV and a self-made qwerty keyboard as college project (we also made our own linear motor and broke the lab wall ).

Hacked CP/M to make it show up in Hindi (involved changing the char set PROM). Wrote our own C compilers (this became a fashion later; for us it was subsistence). Wrote Real Time OS to run on micros. Made India's first microprocessor based Control Systems (Power Station and Industrial Controls).

Never got to play any computer games. Analyzing how the old games worked in the CP/M and DOS days took away the fun - I still can't play games on the computer. I had a portable computer in 1983 - an Otrona Attache with 5" green CRT screen and 2x 5.25" double sided floppy drives, running CP/M. My first HDD came in 1984 - a royal 10MB. The next one was a 40MB drive - and I thought I will never be able to fill it in my life.

8" floppies? I still have a couple of drives and a couple of boxes of SS and DS floppies. And lots of other left over stuff from that and the next 6 generations of computers as well. Maybe I will donate them to a museum some day (will please my wife no end).

[tilt]

Originally Posted by DerAlte

I started in 1975 with PDP8 *SNIP*. Maybe I will donate them to a museum some day (will please my wife no end).

*bowing repeatedly* All hail the Master

Mensch, du bist wirklich der Alte

Cheers

[raghu.t.k]

Originally Posted by DerAlte

I started in 1975 with PDP8 and no storage or I/O devices (for some reason college didn't get them). It had magnetic core memory, switches for input and neon lamps for output. Set switches for address and data, push Load, repeat till all instructions and data were fed in. Then run till output shows up on lamps. Then formal FORTRAN for some time, and some BASIC. Made a VT100-type terminal using a TV and a self-made qwerty keyboard as college project (we also made our own linear motor and broke the lab wall ).
...
.

WOW thats long long ago.

It would be interesting to see how our current day developers using IDE and google for development would fare on the PDPs.

How do you manage to store bits and pieces from 6 generations ?

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by DerAlte

I started in 1975 with PDP8 and no storage or I/O devices (for some reason college didn't get them). It had magnetic core memory, switches for input and neon lamps for output. Set switches for address and data, push Load, repeat till all instructions and data were fed in. Then run till output shows up on lamps.

I always wondered what sort of stuff could be done on a machine like that?

The thing that surprises me now is that people still quote age as an excuse for computer illiteracy --- when we are three or four generations in, and those who were the real pioneers that made everything we do today possible, like Dennis Ritchie, have now been swapped out!

[honeybee]

Originally Posted by venuvedam

And anyone remember ZX Spectrum Plus computer with Chess games on audio cassettes?

Yep, it made such a screeching noise when reading and writing.

Also typing out programs in the 128 bit mode was extremely fast due to the keywords mapped to keyboard keys and a very intelligent system of forcing you to enter the correct elements. For e.g. if you typed Print, the next word would automatically be a string.

[venuvedam]

What is amazing is - We didn't have to have an internet connection to spend hours on a computer. There were times when I spent 8 to 9 hours continuously staring at the black and white monitor of an SX386 computer and doing stuff that I loved.

Does anyone remember Bubba Majilikutty? (Those who played Prince of Persia arcade game would know)

Today, give me a computer that doesn't connect to the internet for an hour and I have no idea what to do with it. :(

Back then, my favorite games were Prince, Dave, Aladdin, King's Quest, Rayman...

And DBase - creating tables and writing SQL queries to retrieve that data - It was a wonderful experience.

[adnaps]

Visited my old office after 7 years. Was pleasantly surprised to see a billing program written by me on foxbase in 1988 still in active use.

I also remember being asked to stay back in office at night on 31st Dec 1999 for the Y2K scare. The then power to be , not having much exposure to computers were expecting a serious failure of computers that night in spite of all our assurances to the contrary. As expected Y2K just appeared at the stroke of midnight and to the pleasant surprise of most, skipped over to the next century without a whimper.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by rishab.k

Ever seen a punched card.

Originally Posted by TheTeacher

My very first job in life was programming on an IBM 1401 mainframe: card reader/punch, 600 LPM line printer, 4 tape drives, 16 KB RAM (core memory). I was part of the team that wrote an exceedingly complex payroll program for it, all on punched cards.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

In the mid 70's whilst at naval college I learned to program in Basic and Fortran. And we had to use those punch cards to actually input the programs. Very cumbersome.

Originally Posted by Sutripta

Programming on punch cards (also called Hollerith cards).

Well fellas, this one's for you, found these at my father-in-law's place in Mumbai, he was going to throw them out!

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by am1m

Well fellas, this one's for you, found these at my father-in-law's place in Mumbai, he was going to throw them out!

Thanks, brings back (very distant) memories!

Jeroen

[Nav-i-gator]

Let me share my earliest (not so distant) memories with computers (and I'm not an engineer, let alone a software one).

Back in early 2000's, my brother (who IS an engineer and was a bit of an innovator) was early adopter of tech in our extended circle of relatives and friends. He got a top specced (by those times' standards) assembled by going to Lajpat nagar (Delhi) and buying motherboards, chips, memory drives and peripherals himself. Result was a "power-packed" pentium 4 running, 256MB RAM, 80GB Seagate hard disk, 19inch color monitor, 3 USB slots and creative speakers! and a 128mb SSD pen drive.

Eventually, around 2005, it was handed down to me when I was nearing my 4 year degree course in Agriculture sciences. Needless to say, it was a hit amongst my hostelmates.

My usage (I was fairly good at "running" computers, by the standards of my friends) was limited to downloading latest songs, short video clips and games (mostly flash games, as the download speeds on early 2G USB plug-in dongles from Reliance/Docomo were painfully slow) and downloading and installing ringtones/games on my Nokia 6600 running Symbian (I bought a USB bluetooth adapter to transfer downloaded files from computer to phone, as there was no other way).

During those times, Yahoo messenger ruled the social media, top of the charts games were Project IGI (I still love that game), Delta force, Tekken, Need for speed, Clash of the worlds, Roadrash (that was a craze), pocket tanks and recoil (I still remember the cheat codes Hemmit, Medic, Cavalry).